Sound Effects

Electromagnetic informations are invisible and omnipresent. In every city, especially the big ones, an infinite number of electromagnetic waves is hidden: we can’t hear them, but they’re everywhere! Unseen Noises explores the “invisible” noise pollution transducing electromagnetic fields into audio signals with a telephone pickup: it acts like a radio antenna for hum and weird electromagnetic noises.

“We used telephone tap coils that receive electromagnetic signals around us and convert them into audible information to discover invisible and surprising aspects of the environment in which we live in.

This Sound Effects library contains 633 files that feature over 1000 sounds of unsettling and unpleasant squeaking and creaking elements. It’s a great starting point for designing a vast number of different soundscapes in various genres – from just using the sounds as general Hard Effects, to Science Fiction and Horror.
All sounds are production ready: Cleaned, Edited, levelled, and come with embedded BWF Metadata.

It delivers door and furniture creaks and squeaks, creaking leather, rubber and balloons, door handles, disturbing metal on metal squeaks and much more.

This sound effects library is a composite collection of 345 files with even more single sounds of unsettling and and unpleasant squeaking and creaking elements. It’s a great starting point for designing a vast number of different soundscapes in various genres – from just using the sounds as general Hard Effects, through Science Fiction to Horror. All sounds are production ready: Cleaned, edited and leveled, and all with with embedded BWF Metadata.

A collection of footsteps and movements not usually found in sound libraries: Featuring stagger, struggle, fighting, drunken steps, sudden quick movements on unusual surfaces like plastic sheet, plastic floor mat and other surfaces.

UNIQUE SONIC PHENOMENA LEAKING OUT OF EARTH’S CRUST
Your curiosity for this new nature collection is more than appropriate: it’s a MICRO-BOOM Library (download only) of geothermal sounds from geysers, mineral springs, steam vents, mud pots and fumaroles that gargle, spurt, trumpet, boil, and gush with an amazing variety of sounds, making sure to attract listeners and strengthen volcanic sound designs.

UPWELLINGS holds exceptional geothermal sounds such as churnings, thuds, bubbly hiss or sloshing brews. This exotic power captures and holds the audience’s attention.

COMPREHENSIVE GUIDES

In addition, there are two useful guides: Sound Designing with UPWELLINGS provides helpful tips about where to use geothermal sounds. How to Record UPWELLINGS provides professional advice on where to go, when to record, and the best position for your microphones.

Iconic military truck recorded from all sides and at various distances. There are slow, medium and fast drive-bys, departures and arrivals. The interior was recorded quadraphonically. The exhaust system was taped, as was the engine from under the hood. Microphones used were the Neumann U87, Sennheiser MKH 70, Sennheiser MKH 416, Violet Design’s ‘Amethyst’, and the Schoeps CMC MK4. Also recorded were the doors, gas pedal, wipers, gearbox and ventilation system of this general-purpose off-road beast.

The IMZ-Ural Dnepr M-72 motorcycle sound fx library features 377 clips in 15.35 gigabytes of audio. Also related to the BMW R-71 and Chinese CJ750 Chang Jiang, it features a 1944 version of the World War 2 Red Army bike with a 2 cylinder boxer 750cm3 engine with a 3 gear transmission.

A total of 20 synchronized takes share onboard, exterior, and performed Foley effects. The 9 onboard perspectives place microphones on the headlight, seat, exhaust, engine, and in the sidecar to record driving with steady RPMs, ramps, and gearshifts. Three pre-rendered mixes of the engine, exhaust, and onboard microphones are also available. A total of 10 exterior perspectives share idling, starting, stopping, departures, passes by, and arrivals at slow to fast speeds.

The package also offers Pro Tools and Reaper mixing sessions with professional metadata embedded in every clip.

The Ural M72 1943 is 750 cc Soviet WWII motorcycle that is bleeding with class. This sound pack captures this hog with a 4-channel that is nearly six minutes in length. With two mics on its exhaust, one on the engine and one onboard, you get the engine starting, stopping, revving, driving and a surround pass by. This motorcycle sounds just as it looks—beefy!

If you're after city ambiences, URBAN & SUBURBAN provides a solid foundation for any sound designer to create a believable acoustic backdrop right out of the gate with common ambiences in varying intensities, daytimes and configurations. Easily accessible public places are captured in excellent quality, yet enough balance and distance to support the scene in the background and embed more prominent sounds into the mix.

COMMON VS UNUSUAL
While URBAN & SUBURBAN provides all the necessary basics, it also goes the extra mile by providing more isolated environments as well as recordings of special events that will come in handy when a change of scenery or dramaturgy is required. Various forms of traffic, groups of people, buildings, animals, wind and many more sound sources that make an appearance in this library ensure that you are able to craft an experience complete with the necessary components.

Urban Air is a collection of long duration / ready to use / surround urban backgrounds.

This is aXLsound’s first surround ambience library, it has been recorded across different cities with various microphones setup ( LCR ORTF / QUAD / 5.0 ) and then carefully collected and edited into 5.0 surround tracks.

The duration of the tracks varies between 02m 30s for the shortest and more than 08 minutes with the vast majority lasting around 04-05 minutes, so long scenes shouldn’t be a problem. Also, some sounds include markers highlighting (un)interesting sounds and events.

Urban Berlin Vol. 1 is the first release from a set of different Sound Librarys from Germany’s Capitol City Berlin. This first Volume contains Sounds like Citylife, Leisure, Traffic and Train Stations, Pleasure Boat, Flea Market, Trade Fair, Shopping and Crowds in different public Situations. Indoor and Outdoor.

Urban Berlin Volume 2 is the brand new library in addition to volume 1, capturing the many sounds of the German capital.

We recorded in the districts: Kreuzberg, Mitte, Charlottenburg and Tiergarten. This Library contains the most-visited places, as well as quiet streets and backyards. Most of these recordings were made during the spring of 2016. For further details about the locations, please read the spread-sheet and take a look on the location photos.

It was completely recorded in MS-Stereo (mid/side Signal) which gives you the great opportunity to handle the stereo-spread in post production. For those of you, who want fast results, we offer you a converted version in full Stereo-spread or take both as a bundle. The excellent Neumann Shotgun MS-Microphone RSM 190i was used in this session.

Urban Berlin Volume 3 is the brand new library in addition to volume 1 and volume 2 capturing the many sounds of the German capital.

We recorded in the districts: Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain. This Library contains roomtones of a Hospital, a Playground, Trainstations and other crowded places. For further details about the locations, please read the spread-sheet and take a look on the location photos.

Urban Crows is a library full of interesting sounds of single crows and swarms.

These proud birds deserve a lot more attention than they usually get. They are amazingly intelligent, social and by no means aggressive or monotonous when it comes to their communication capabilities.

The library evolved throughout winter 2015/16 and was taken from the attic of a house surrounded by trees were the crows frequently stayed overnight. So it was a great pleasure to record them arriving in the evenings as well as hearing them chatting during the dawn. They have a huge arsenal of clearly distinguishable single caws, funny sighs or nervous screams that often evolved to a huge cluster of noises that became stronger when the church bells began to ring and the sun came up.

All takes are recorded in Mid-Side stereo, with Sennheiser MKH-70 shotgun for a strong mid-signal and AKG-C394B for the ambience. The total playing time of the library is approx. 1h 30min.

Audiobeast is proud to present our second sample library; the only library of its kind to focus entirely on weapons being fired in urban environments! For this recording session we were given access to a military training site known as a FIBUA (Fighting In Built-Up Area) consisting of streets with a variety of buildings, vehicles, and exclusive permission to fire weapons in several locations. Pictures of the street and gas station locations and firing points are included.

The aim of this library was to offer the slapback type tails needed for gun sound design for convincing city scenes in film, games and tv production. It's always been difficult to find gun recordings in a city environment so we hope this library helps sound people everywhere.

This Library contains over 3 GBs of weapons being fired in multiple urban environments, a street, outside of a gas station and inside of a tower block. 218 WAV files of single shots, bursts and many with multiple takes, all recorded at 96 khz 24 bit, with heaps of information on microphones used and distance from the firearms.

Various distances were captured, from the DPA4062 on the guns themselves, to the distant other end of the street 100 metres away. To add, some mics were positioned around corners, a nearby graveyard, through walls and in armored vehicles to capture a variety of perspectives.

Minimal cleanup on the recordings was carried out very carefully so as not to introduce any artefacts into the recordings, they are presented as raw as possible.

When you carry the word „BOOM“ in your company name, your first dedicated explosion sound effects library should be a decent one. For the recordings, we teamed up with the sound department of EA DICE (Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront) and we created the biggest explosion sound FX library ever. DICE uses the recordings heavily to impressively blow up the world in their AAA title Battlefield V and now you can get the recordings and our ready-to-use designed sounds in stereo and 5.1 surround for your very own projects. It’s a highly explosive pack with 13.4GB of explosion sound effects.

Urban Explosions Construction Kit:

Recorded in real urban environments
Why Urban Explosions? Most explosions in movies, games or trailers don’t happen out on a plain field, they happen in urban environments with buildings around them that shape the character of the explosion sound in a very specific way. The special thing about our urban explosions sound FX library is that it has been recorded in a real urban environment, so you get super-realistic reverbs and tails instead of artificially processed post-production reverbs or tails that don’t sound urban at all. For the sake of completeness, we also recorded a non-urban explosion on a plain field, so you’re covered here as well.

Multi-Channel Recordings with up to 42 Channels
We had a lot of microphones with us and we placed them in all possible positions around the explosion spot. We have very close mics, close mics, medium distance mics, distant mics, mics in front of buildings, mics behind buildings, mics inside of buildings. Each explosion in the URBAN EXPLOSIONS CONSTRUCTION KIT comes with a minimum of 24 channels, including a 4 channel ambisonic file, so you can simply drag all channels to your DAW and easily mix the sound exactly as you want.

Sweeteners
You’re looking for a more supernatural sound or your mix misses a bit of impact, smack, punch, tail, cackling, rumbling or character? No problem, the CONSTRUCTION KIT has a lot of great high-quality sweeteners that will easily enrich your mix in the desired way.

Urban Explosions Designed:

Incredibly versatile
Our DESIGNED edition comes with a myriad of ready-to-use explosion sound FX in the categories INDOOR, NEUTRAL & URBAN, each of them in SMALL, MEDIUM & LARGE explosion sizes. Beyond that, you have the choice between MEDIUM and FAR distances, FAST or SLOW explosions and a MODERN, SOFT, CRISP or DISTORTED character. With this range of sounds, you’re certainly sure to find the right one for your scene.

Stereo & 5.1 Surround
In addition to the stereo version our sound designers created 5.1 surround versions for each sound so you are fully prepared to implement your creative surround vision with ease.

Designed by 4 Award-Winning Sound Designers
We consider sound design as a craftsmanship and we’re very happy and proud to rely on the talent of four awesome sound designers that really know their trade.

Urban Explosions Bundle:

THE BUNDLE – The best of both worlds at a discounted price
The Bundle gives you the full sound design power as it contains both – the DESIGNED and the CONSTRUCTION KIT edition at a discounted price.

More than just roomtones, this collection is about living in town. Changing an appartment’s common sounds into simple poetry. This collection was recorded in a big city such as Paris and London but also more quiet places.

About Ambisonics:

This is an Ambisonics sound effects library - and by using the free SoundField SurroundZone 2 plugin you can convert the B-format files into your preferred format (stereo, 5.0, 5.1, 6.0, 6.1, 7.0 or 7.1 surround). Note: The library also contains ready-made stereo mixdowns for your convenience.

This is the second part of Urban Housing ambisonics series. Those atmospheres are the most helpful to create an immersive sensation of living in town. Mostly recorded in upper class hotel room from New York, Paris, Amsterdam and Bangkok. Sounds are deep and comfortable – and with an open window, it’s a totally different story.

About Ambisonics:

This is an Ambisonics sound effects library - and by using the free SoundField SurroundZone 2 plugin you can convert the B-format files into your preferred format (stereo, 5.0, 5.1, 6.0, 6.1, 7.0 or 7.1 surround). Note: The library also contains ready-made stereo mixdowns for your convenience.

Urban Passes By delivers hundreds of different vehicles passing by in an urban environment, covering all your needs for traffic scenes, especially to edit cars in the background or vehicles passing by your main character’s car during an onboard scene.

No need to search through your numerous traffic recordings to find the one “pass by”, we gathered hundreds of them from very slow to fast, dry cobblestones to very wet asphalt.
This library aims to help sound editors quickly find the whooshin’ vehicles they need, it includes passes by of cars, motorcycles, mopeds, trucks, etc…

Urban Rain is a sound library that delivers 50 city rain sounds recorded in 96 kHz/24 bit, with Soundminer and BWAV embedded metadata. The library contains various types of rain at different intensities, from very light to downpour. Several thunder claps and rumbles are present as well. Locations are as follows: a terrace, a balcony, a backyard, several streets, a rooftop, a garage, inside a car, a loft (from inside), Chelsea FC Stadium and two patios (interior). All files have been recorded at night so human activity is minimum, although you will hear a tiny bit of traffic rumble in the background.

The library also includes 8 Ambisonics files (B-Format, both in FuMa and ambiX, along with a downmix in stereo) and other sounds related to water in the citylife, such as pipes, a drain and a gutter, which are loopable. By using the free SoundField SurroundZone 2 plugin you can convert the B-format files into your preferred format (stereo, 5.0, 5.1, 7.1).

Descriptive markers have been added to several files to highlight interesting events in an otherwise featureless waveform. These markers can be read in programs such as Izotope RX, Reaper, and Soundminer. The markers are also included as .txt files in separate folder.

Urban Rain II brings you 53 urban rain sounds captured at various indoor and outdoor locations. Recorded at night or at quiet times so it’s free of unwanted sounds, this library includes light, medium and heavy rain over different locations and surfaces.

Recent Reviews

What others are saying:

With A Sound Effect, Asbjoern has created a web site where our international community can browse, learn, and share the vast fruits of our labors. Together we are accelerating the very real potential power of sound design as a recognized art form.

There are many great independent sound effect libraries available these days. The main problem with having so many, is keeping track of them!

A Sound Effect is a great hub, and is one of the first places I visit to look for sounds by category or genre. I started coming here to see if I could find libraries that I knew I had heard, but forgot WHERE I had heard them.

And in the process discovered libraries I never would have found otherwise. Great work! Keep it up!

David Farmer

Sound designer:Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit trilogies

We're always looking for new sounds to mangle, so when A Sound Effect had a holiday sale, I tried them out.

The purchase experience is really smooth and quick, and delivery is almost instant.